We actually moved to using Brother lasers after dealing with HP’s anti-consumer nonsense one too many times. They started to refuse to distribute offline capable installers for their drivers, so we returned the rest of our stock and swore them off.

Just make sure you get the older Brothers, pre-subscription model.

Brother keep threating to bring in recognition of only one toner cartridge

My HP Deskjet network printer was recognized automatically by Linux Mint. I had to do nothing.

Zip drives (do those things even exist anymore?) do not use tape cartridges, they are basically oversized floppies.

If you’re actually using tape drives (LTO media, presumably), just step away from the damn HP software. I manage literal petabytes on tape, and LTO media comes with a lifetime warranty. Yes, even HP branded cartridges - there’s only two actual manufacturers left, Fujifilm and, iirc, Sony.

Same for the drive, in fact - HP stopped producing them years ago, IBM is the only manufacturer left.

Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.

That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.

Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.

HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.

If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.

I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.

It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.

What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.

Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.

However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.

Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:

That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.

Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription

Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.

For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).